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Roundup: Arab Americans Under Threats After Terrorist Attacks
Arab Americans have been under threats from some of their countrymen after the Bush administration blamed Saudi fugitive bin Laden and his followers for committing "acts of war" in Tuesday's suicide attacks in New York and Washington.
According to The Washington Post, by Wednesday evening, Muslim groups in the United States had received more than 100 reports of harassment against people in Muslim dress or even those who looked Middle Eastern.
The hatred has been mounting despite the fact that every Muslim and Arab group in the country has stood firm in condemning the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, which presumably caused as many as thousands of casualties.
In Huntington, New York, a 75-year-old man tried to run over a Pakistani woman in a shopping mall parking lot, and he followed the woman into a store and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country," according an AP report.
Earlier Thursday, the Islamic Society of Denton, Texas, was attacked by a Molotov cocktail, and suffered a damage estimated at 2,500 dollars. No one was hurt in the incident.
In Irving, a suburb of Dallas, a local Islamic center was fired by up to six shots after Tuesday's terrorist attacks in the country's political and financial centers, The Washington Post reported.
In Old Town Alexandra, Virginia, which is not far from the Pentagon, two bricks with notes tied to them were thrown into the window of an Islamic bookstore. One note was addressed to "Arab murderers," and the other said: "You come to this country and kill. You must die as well."
Members of the Islamic community in Sterling, Virginia, when arriving at a Red Cross center early Wednesday morning to donate blood for victims of the attacks, found the hallway painted in black letters several feet tall, which read: "Die Pigs" and " Muslims Burn Forever."
Near Dulles International Airport, where the American airline 77 took off Tuesday morning just to slam into the Pentagon, the new home of an Islamic community center was defaced with profane anti-Islamic slogans. In San Francisco, the door of a mosque was splattered with blood.
In New York city, a Palestinian-American, who is in charge of the Arab-American Family Service Center, received several threatening calls on Wednesday, one saying that "you should all die for what you've done to my country."
"Get out of our country," -- This is the slogan on a placard held by a man outside a mosque in New York city. And at a makeshift memorial at Union Square, a spat broke out over a favorable comment about Islam, the New York Times reported.
In Atlanta and Chicago, mosques and Islamic centers were protected by police cars. Muslim schools in Detroit and Los Angeles were shut down for fear of attacks. In Falls Church, Virginia, an Islamic center was closed and Friday services got cancelled after mosque leaders received threats against the facility.
"Like every American, I am outraged" at Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, but "I'm not the enemy," wrote Reshma Memon Yaqub, an American journalist of Arab descent, in a column article published by The Washington Post on Thursday.
"I feel as though I've suddenly become the enemy of two groups - - those who wish to hurt Americans, and those Americans who wish to strike back. It's a frightening corner to be in," Yaqub complained.
He wrote that when lone Muslims have committed acts of terrorism, hate crimes have abounded against American Muslims who look like coming from "that part of the world," "against American mosques, against American children in Muslim schools who pray to the same peace-loving God as Jews and Christians."
In responding to mounting complaints, U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday urged the public to step back from venting their animosity against Arab Americans and Muslim communities in the country.
"We should not hold one who is a Muslim responsible for an act of terror," Bush said. "We must be mindful ... we treat Arab- Americans and Muslims with the respect they deserve," he added.
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